Asceticism is not that you should not own anything, but that nothing should own you. — Ali ibn Abi Talib
Austerity is an ornament, humility is honorable. — Indian Proverbs
When you reach your sixties, you have to decide whether you're going to be a sot or an ascetic. In other words if you want to go on working after you're sixty, some degree of asceticism is inevitable. — Malcolm Muggeridge
Lack of ornamentation is a sign of spiritual strength. — Adolf Loos
Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness, have few desires. — Lao Tzu
Self restraint in speech, food, entertainment and vanity are the most essential fundamental of spiritual growth. — Nouman Ali Khan
The sage avoids extremity, excess, and extravagance. — Lao Tzu
Renounce to the desire of possessing worldly things: this is the first step in the path of perfection; by mean of this absolute untie is how the passions can be fought. — Eliphas Levi
The wise man then followed a simple way of life-which is hardly surprising when you consider how even in this modern age he seeks to be as little encumbered as he possibly can. — Seneca
If you are attached to the things of this earth, you should give alms sufficient to enable you to punish your avarice by depriving yourself of all that is not absolutely necessary for life. — John Vianney
The only way for a rich man to be healthy is by exercise and abstinence, to live as if he were poor. — William Temple
It is useless to subdue the flesh by abstinence, unless one gives up his irregular life, and abandons vices which defile his soul. — Benedict of Nursia
He who would be serene and pure needs but one thing, detachment. — Meister Eckhart
I might become an ascetic, live in India. A little rice is about the best I can do now. — Gore Vidal
A dominant religion is never ascetic. — Thomas B. Macaulay
No ascetic can be considered reliably sane. — A. J. Liebling
Forgiveness is the true nature of the ascetic. — Ramakrishna
Ascetic spirituality is a symptom of the very disease which it intends to cure. — Anodea Judith
The ascetic is often a sensualist who has reached the limit of his capacity. — Jacques Barzun
Ascetic Image Quotes
Love Aesthetic Quotes
Although I was born in Idaho and now live in New York, I definitely identify with the European aesthetic. Paris is my mecca; it's where I discovered my flair for fashion. But I pay rent and work in New York, so that is my home - I love the culture clash of the city. — Dree Hemingway
I love fashion, and I simply enjoy good design in clothes and regard that as one of my hobbies. — Martha C. Nussbaum
Physical attraction was about aesthetics, not sexual performance, not mental stimulation. Without a mental connection, a remarkable sexual performance yielded no lifelong guarantees. It was only lust. And lust was not love. — Eric Jerome Dickey
Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression and respect. — Alain de Botton
I cannot think that a player genuinely loving the game can get pleasure just from the number of points scored no matter how impressive the total. I will not speak of myself, but for the masters of the older generation, from whose games we learned, the aesthetic side was the most important. - — Alexander Kotov
On hearing about powerful love, respond, be moved like an aesthete. Only, fortunate as you've been, remember how much your imagination created for you. — C.P. Cavafy
I don't have formal training at all, but I did grow up around design. My parents both flipped homes. A typical weekend for us was walking through model home units. I loved walking through interesting floor plans and seeing different design aesthetics. — Jeremiah Brent
I hate that aesthetic game of the eye and the mind, played by these connoisseurs, these mandarins who "appreciate" beauty. What is beauty, anyway? There's no such thing. I never "appreciate," any more than I "like." I love it or I hate. — Pablo Picasso
I love going somewhere like Japan where you can't understand a word of the advertising - you just see it for its aesthetic beauty, without feeling that you're being sold something. — Stanley Donwood
Inspirational Aesthetic Quotes
Creating is about sharing ideas, sharing aesthetics, sharing what you believe in with other people. — Shepard Fairey
A designer is a planner with an aesthetic sense. — Bruno Munari
Good design keeps the user happy, the manufacturer in the black and the aesthete unoffended. — Raymond Loewy
I’m not just edgy, and I’m not just into a tomboy look, and I’m not just girly. I do what I want, and if I like something, I’ll wear it. — Sadie Sink
A concerted effort to preserve our heritage is a vital link to our cultural, educational, aesthetic, inspirational and economic legacies - all of the things that quite literally make us who we are. — Steve Berry
I think I definitely created a very unique look which probably hasn’t been on the market before. — Martyn Ford
Regardless of how Beautified turned out, it was a great experience, and it was an excellent product and one that people really appreciated in the space. — Hannah Bronfman
Character. Intelligence. Strength. Style. That makes beauty. — Diane Von Furstenberg
I suspect that many of the great cultural shifts that prepare the way for political change are largely aesthetic. — J. G. Ballard
Aesthetic Quotes
Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction. — E. O. Wilson
Design must be functional and functionality must be translated into visual aesthetics, without any reliance on gimmicks that have to be explained. — Ferdinand Porsche
Every great work of art should be considered like any work of nature. First of all from the point of view of its aesthetic reality and then not just from its development and the mastery of its creation but from the standpoint of what has moved and agitated its creator. — Amedeo Modigliani
I find beauty in the continual shaping of chaos which clearly embodies the primordial power of nature's performance — Iris van Herpen
Espresso consumption is an aesthetic experience,like tasting a vintage wine or admiring a painting. — Andrea Illy
Design is about the betterment of our lives poetically, aesthetically, experientially, sensorially, and emotionally. — Karim Rashid
Fly-fishing is solitary, contemplative, misanthropic, scientific in some hands, poetic in others, and laced with conflicting aesthetic considerations. It's not even clear if catching fish is actually the point. — John Gierach
Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that's why it is so complicated. — Paul Rand
Dreaming is not merely an act of communication; it is also an aesthetic activity, a game of the imagination, a game that is a value in itself. — Milan Kundera
All the effects of Nature are only the mathematical consequences of a small number of immutable laws. — Pierre-Simon Laplace
Asceticism Quotes
American life, in large cities, is a perpetual assault on the senses and the nerves; it is out of asceticism, out of unworldliness, precisely, that we bear it. — Joseph McCarthy
The dunyâ distracts and preoccupies the heart and body, but al-zuhd (asceticism, not giving importance to worldly things) gives rest to the heart and body. Verily, Allâh will ask us about the halâl things we enjoyed, so what about the harâm! — Hasan of Basra
Give up a member to save a family, a family to save a village, a village to save a country, and the country to save yourself. — Vyasa
Out of the doctrine of original sin grew the crimes and miseries of asceticism, celibacy and witchcraft; woman becoming the helpless victim of all these delusions. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton
I never did calligraphy... But handwriting is an entirely different kind of thing. It's part of the syndrome of modernism... It's part of that asceticism. — Paul Rand
The most intelligent men, like the strongest, find their happiness where others would find only disaster: in the labyrinth, in being hard with themselves and with others, in effort; their delight is self-mastery; in them asceticism becomes second nature, a necessity, as instinct. — Friedrich Nietzsche
Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism a Socialist tinge. — Karl Marx
Yet in a kingdom containing seven constituent parts, which is upheld like the triple staff ,of an ascetic , there is no ,single part more important ,than the others , by reason of the importance of the qualities of each for the others. — Guru Nanak
The beauty of a cuckoo is in its notes, that of a woman in her unalloyed devotion to her husband, that of an ugly person in his scholarship, and that of an ascetic in his forgiveness. — Chanakya
The ascetic remembrance of death is opposed to akedia, to anxiety, to depression, and becomes a powerful reminder of eternity, its joyful nostalgia. — Paul Evdokimov
Bliss in depletion. I finally got it. It's that beautiful place of ascetic purity that is permitted to bloom only when the mind is stopped dead in its tracks and everything else is stripped away, leaving your soul--or who you really are--to forge a connection with the truth. — Rich Roll
Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic. — Bertrand Russell
During a chess tournament a master must envisage himself as a cross between an ascetic monk and a beast of prey. — Alexander Alekhine
I fall into that nebulous, quote-unquote, normal American woman size that legions of fashion stylists detest. For the record, I'm a size 8 - this week, anyway. Many stylists hate that size because I think to them, it shows that I lack the discipline to be an ascetic; or the confident, sassy abandon to be a total fatty hedonist. — Mindy Kaling
A solitary ascetic is a symbol of the most cowardly egotism; a hermit who flees from his brothers instead of helping them to carry the burden of life, to work for others, and to put their shoulders to the wheel of social life, is a coward who hides himself when the battle is on, and goes to sleep drunk on an opiate. — H. P. Blavatsky
Fashions pass quickly, and nothing is more pathetic than those puppets of fashion outrageously made up one day, pale the next, pleated or ironed stiff, libertine or ascetic. Playing with fashion is an art. The first rule is don't burn your wings. — Yves Saint Laurent
I like prostitution. My heart has never failed to pound at the sight of one of those provocatively dressed women walking in the rain under the gaslamps, just as the sight of monks in their robes and girdles touches some ascetic, hidden corner of my soul. — Gustave Flaubert
I think one of the things you and I have to learn is that we have to live without the consolation of belonging to a Church.... Of one thing I am certain. The religion of the future will have to be extremely ascetic, and by that I don't mean just going without food and drink. — Ludwig Wittgenstein
Neither my life of luxury in the palace -nor- my life as ascetic in the forest were ways to enlightenment. — Buddha
We were preparing not Peace only, but Eternal Peace. There was about us the halo of some divine mission. We must be alert, stern, righteous and ascetic. For we were bent on doing great, permanent and noble things. — Harold Nicolson
He who, though dressed in fine apparel, exercises tranquillity, is quiet, subdued, restrained, chaste, and has ceased to find fault with all other beings, he indeed is an ascetic. — Max Muller
I shall no longer be instructed by the Yoga Veda or the Aharva Veda, or the ascetics, or any other doctrine whatsoever. I shall learn from myself, be a pupil of myself; I shall get to know myself, the mystery of Siddhartha." He looked around as if he were seeing the world for the first time. — Hermann Hesse
Ascetics and fakirs come to mitigate human suffering; to heal us and lead us on the path. They put up with criticism; they go through many worldly trials. Some of them have even become martyrs for our sake. But they have done all this with a smile and with gratitude to God. Hence sacrifice is a great virtue. — Dada Vaswani
Debauchery conceived of as a kind of ascetic experience is not new, either for men or for women, but until Story of O no woman to my knowledge had said it. — Anne Desclos
Everybody who does not live in a prostitute's bed and on a diet of cocaine snow is called an ascetic nowadays. — George Bernard Shaw
This severe, ascetic music, calm and horizontal as the line of the ocean, monotonous by virtue of its serenity, anti-sensuous, and yet so intense in its contemplativeness that it verges sometimes on ecstasy. — Charles Gounod
There are five signs of righteousness: a gentle disposition and a soft heart, shedding tears of regret, ascetism and not caring about the world, being unambitious, and having a conscience. — Shaqiq al-Balkhi
A commercial society whose members are essentially ascetic and indifferent in social ritual has to be provided with blueprints and specifications for evoking the right tone for every occasion. — Marshall McLuhan
In every ascetic morality man worships a part of himself as God and for that he needs to diabolize the other part. — Friedrich Nietzsche
No sane man can afford to dispense with debilitating pleasures; no ascetic can be considered reliably sane. — Robert M. Parker, Jr.
God abides in each commandment by His gracious power. "God is hidden in His commandments", says St. Mark the Ascetic. God helps everyone who strives to keep His commandments. That God abides in us we know by the Spirit, which He has given us. This means that a Christian is never alone, but that he lives and works together with the Thrice-Holy God. — Justin Popovic
Some have paid me an undeserved compliment by supposing that my Letters were the ripe fruit of many years' study in moral and ascetic theology. They forgot that there is an equally reliable, though less creditable, way of learning how temptation works. — C. S. Lewis
In short, the Gaon was a one-sided, severe ascetic, and would never have deserved the title of a good father, a good husband, an amiable man ... [T]here is no occasion at all for pitying Mrs. Gaon. ... Saints are happy in their suffering, and noble souls find their happiness in sacrificing themselves for these sufferers. — Solomon Schechter
The student who deceives himself into thinking that he is giving his life like an ascetic in the spirit of sacrifice for art, is the victim of a deplorable species of egotism. — Alma Gluck
Man can learn self-discipline without becoming ascetic; he can be wise without waiting to be old; he can be influential without waiting for status. Man can sharpen his ability to distinguish between matters of principle and matters of preference, but only if we have a wise interplay between time and truth, between minutes and morality. — Neal A. Maxwell
It is a perverse faith, in that it reveres the "environment" ahead of people who live in it. It is a most ascetic superstition, in that it demands we live less happily and less freely and with less prosperity - the opposite of, say, the Protestant work ethic that helped build Ontario. — Ezra Levant
A holy life is not an ascetic, or gloomy or solitary life, but a life regulated by divine truth and faithful in Christian duty. It is living above the world while we are still in it. — Tryon Edwards
When I was exposed to the history and the cultural background of why women whose husbands die, why they have to become ascetic or live a life that is completely deprived of emotional or social or cultural sustenance, I was really shocked. — Deepa Mehta
I have finally decided to write my book on the spiritual life. I mean to put down as simply as possible the sort of ascetical or mystical teaching that I have been living and preaching so long. I call it 'Le Milieu Divin,' but I am being careful to include nothing esoteric and the minimum of explicit philosophy. — Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
I'm not an ascetic and please don't use the word zen, which is so lightly bandied about these days. Being zen . . . It's shameful to talk in such a way. I haven't become an ascetic but I'm not going to build up another collection. I'm going to create my new environment. I already know what I want. — Pierre Berge
My Dad used to say that the balance of the world relied on all of the monks who were living outside of society in creative isolation. I don't quite understand the ascetic life or the private life or the monastic private life. But I definitely understand privacy's value. — Sufjan Stevens
I typically don't adopt the ascetic approach. In part, that's because I do use the Net for research even as I'm writing (to check facts, or so on). But I think it's also because I find the possibility of distraction comforting. — James Surowiecki
Fasting, as some people speculate, is not a bodily torture, martyrdom, or a cross, but it is a way to elevate the body to reach the level of cooperation with the soul. When we fast, our intention is not to torture the body but to shun its behaviour. Thus, one who fasts becomes a spiritual and not a physical person. Fasting is an ascetic soul which takes the body with it as its partner in asceticism. — Pope Shenouda III of Alexandria
Humility and ascetic hardship free a man from all sin, for the one cuts out the passions of the soul, the other those of the body. This is what the blessed David indicates when he prays to God, saying, "Look on my humility and my toil, and forgive all my sins" (Ps. 25:18). — Maximus the Confessor
It is a curious thing how poets tend to become ascetics.... Even a debauch for them is a self-flagellation. They go on the loose in cruelty against themselves, admitting that they are pandering to, and despising, the lower self. — D. H. Lawrence
Power and courtly influence form an intoxicating draught even when raised to the lips of an ascetic and a saint. — James Fitzjames Stephen
The Buddha gave his first talks, and three or four ascetics became his first disciples. They recognized his enlightenment. — Frederick Lenz
In Conclusion
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